Shemeem Burney Abbas
State University of New York at Purchase College
Professor of Political Science, Gender Studies and Literature, 2005 to date
University of Texas at Austin
Visiting Faculty, Department of English/Division of Rhetoric and Composition, 2002-2005
Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad
Professor and Chair of the Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics, 1980-2003
Islam and the West; politics, law and gender in Islamic societies; linguistics and music of South Asia (Pakistan and India); women’s studies; postcolonial English language and literature; creative writing.
Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin; M.A., University of Texas at Austin; M.A., University of Leeds (UK)
I am the author of Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws: from Islamic Empires to the Taliban (University of Texas Press, 2013) and The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and India, (University of Texas Press, 2002 ;Oxford University Press, 2003). My research is on Islamic law and women’s rituals in Islamic societies. In 1993 UNICEF published my book Qissa Khwan (Storyteller), a collection of short stories for girls. My other publications focus on English Language Teaching in South Asia. I launched the largest graduate teacher-training program in English as a Foreign Language for South Asia, through the Allama Iqbal Open University in Islamabad. I am currently working on a memoir set in Kashmir.
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